Lakhssassi, Ahmed

Our research program introduces a new direction for the characterization of thermal dynamics in high-density electronic microsystems. Our research recognizes the growing importance of microsystems-on-chip (MSCs), which represent the convergence of several devices, systems, and technologies from the microscale and soon to the nanoscale, as a future integration solution for the microelectronics industry. However, the thermomechanical stress resulting from overheating of new integrated microsystems remains a major obstacle in the face of the required operating performances. In particular, the scale of integration of complete electronic microsystems on a single chip and the increase in operating speed bring insurmountable thermomechanical stress problems. If these aspects are not properly addressed, this will represent a serious threat to the design of future microsystems. More specifically, these aspects become critical in the design of VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration), Large Area Integrated Circuit (LAIC), WSI (Wafer Scale Integration) and SoC (System on Chip) circuits regarding the security and reliability assurance of these new microelectronic devices. Although microsystems on chip cover different physical domains, the characterization of thermal dynamics represents the core of current and future concerns of the microelectronics industry. Moreover, these domains share different aspects of which temperature is the main common concern and which poses enormous challenges for microsystem design methodologies. One of the most important common aspects and which raises insurmountable obstacles is the growing complexity of the problems underlying temperature.